Manga and other picture books
May. 23rd, 2004 01:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaI decided I was going to make icons tonight, lots of them, to fill up my 30-plus empty slots with some to spare for friends and passers-by. This noble resolution foundered for the same reason as all previous instances when I'd decided I was going to make lots of icons; to wit, I frittered away several hours reading the picture books I planned on scanning. Books! They destroy productivity, and I keep buying them. >_> Got some Akutagawa, and Nana #8, and Le Pierre et le sabre which is what they call The Musashi Novel in French. Nana makes so much more sense in French. T_T Of course I'd skimmed the Japanese pretty fast (and never bothered to read through it slowly because the plot made me go WARGH), but wah. What business have I translating when I can't read a comic book nominally for grown-ups? It's not a fluke. I don't understand Trigun Maximum either. In both instances it's colloquial speech that does me in, unlike PMK where I can at least resort to the dictionary.
The thing with Nana - I don't say problem - is that you know Yazawa-sensei has no idea where the plot is going to end up. She can't. ^^; I'd be astonished if she did. She wrote short story A, followed by short story B, and then she (or her editor, or somebody) thought it would be an idea to dump both casts into the same social space and see what these kids made of their lives. That and great clothes is really all there is to it. What makes it readable is how spot-on the characterisation is: everyone in this manga is a friend of yours, or a friend of a friend, or the ex-girlfriend of this guy you used to know (the one who totally had issues like that). The drama is compelling because you buy in. I could draw parallels with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And there's the elegiac framing narration, all bittersweet understanding gained through inevitable distance, so you have to wonder what happened - Nana K.? Elegiac understanding? Well, life happened, surely. But one wants to know. In vol.8 Nana O. has narration as well, but hers is present tense. (And you know it's femslashy when the adoring boyfriend sees fit to inquire politely whether you want to sleep with this friend of yours or what? He's probably turned on by the idea, bastard.)
...And of course the good old-fashioned soapy dorama elements. XD Are the record company execs nefarious? Is Shin an illegitimate child? Who does Reira really love? WHOSE BABY IS IT? WILL THE PAPARAZZI DISCOVER ALL okay sorry got carried away.
Have said that I'm going to - am making - a FST for Nana. But the standards to which it has to live up are daunting. Not to mention slightly nonsensical. (I mean look, right off the bat, bless Yazawa-sensei's soul but Blast is supposed to sound like the Pistols? OKAY NOT GOING TO HAPPEN KTHX. And what about Trapnest? Some sort of cross between Evanescence and the glossiest j-rock on the market?
...I can do better than that. All right, that's the proper attitude. XD)
Went (biked!) to a party and saw Shrek II, by accident as it were, in a very pirated home edition. ^^; Totally worth the money I didn't spend on it. Am also as impressed with Samurai Champloo as everyone else (though I may have known about it for longer than most? XD), but cannot talk more about anime as have spent most of the evening reading books about Kay Nielsen and Modernist Chinese calligraphy, as previously intimated. Also, must to bed or sororial unit will be up at unholy hour to practice piano. Rather, she will be whether I get any sleep or not, so the rest is up to me.
The thing with Nana - I don't say problem - is that you know Yazawa-sensei has no idea where the plot is going to end up. She can't. ^^; I'd be astonished if she did. She wrote short story A, followed by short story B, and then she (or her editor, or somebody) thought it would be an idea to dump both casts into the same social space and see what these kids made of their lives. That and great clothes is really all there is to it. What makes it readable is how spot-on the characterisation is: everyone in this manga is a friend of yours, or a friend of a friend, or the ex-girlfriend of this guy you used to know (the one who totally had issues like that). The drama is compelling because you buy in. I could draw parallels with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And there's the elegiac framing narration, all bittersweet understanding gained through inevitable distance, so you have to wonder what happened - Nana K.? Elegiac understanding? Well, life happened, surely. But one wants to know. In vol.8 Nana O. has narration as well, but hers is present tense. (And you know it's femslashy when the adoring boyfriend sees fit to inquire politely whether you want to sleep with this friend of yours or what? He's probably turned on by the idea, bastard.)
...And of course the good old-fashioned soapy dorama elements. XD Are the record company execs nefarious? Is Shin an illegitimate child? Who does Reira really love? WHOSE BABY IS IT? WILL THE PAPARAZZI DISCOVER ALL okay sorry got carried away.
Have said that I'm going to - am making - a FST for Nana. But the standards to which it has to live up are daunting. Not to mention slightly nonsensical. (I mean look, right off the bat, bless Yazawa-sensei's soul but Blast is supposed to sound like the Pistols? OKAY NOT GOING TO HAPPEN KTHX. And what about Trapnest? Some sort of cross between Evanescence and the glossiest j-rock on the market?
...I can do better than that. All right, that's the proper attitude. XD)
Went (biked!) to a party and saw Shrek II, by accident as it were, in a very pirated home edition. ^^; Totally worth the money I didn't spend on it. Am also as impressed with Samurai Champloo as everyone else (though I may have known about it for longer than most? XD), but cannot talk more about anime as have spent most of the evening reading books about Kay Nielsen and Modernist Chinese calligraphy, as previously intimated. Also, must to bed or sororial unit will be up at unholy hour to practice piano. Rather, she will be whether I get any sleep or not, so the rest is up to me.
